Lsu Law: The Louisiana State University Law School from 1906 to 1977

From its founding in 1906, the Louisiana State University Law School has offered its students a truly distinctive legal education. Integrated programs in Louisiana's unique civil law, in Anglo-American common law and federal law, and in international and comparative law create an overall global law curriculum that is recognized worldwide for its academic excellence and outstanding teaching, research, and public service faculty. In LSU Law, alumnus and professor W. Lee Hargrave chronicles the first seventy years of the institution--up until the point it was made an autonomous Law Center--revealing the faces and forces that have helped to create the special mystique surrounding the school and the meaning of a law degree from LSU. After an initial discussion of the legal profession in Louisiana before the establishment of formal academic instruction, Hargrave maps the LSU Law School's growth and development. He explores all aspects of the school--its administrators and faculty, student body, shifting admission requirements, curriculum, influence on the legal community and state government, and much more. He also describes how students lived and learned during these years and discusses the effects of outside people and events-- including Huey P. Long, World War II, and the civil rights movement--on the school. Hargrave's sweeping study will be of interest to legal historians and the national law school community, but his primary service is to alumni, who will welcome the opportunity to relive their law school days and discover how their short years there fit into the overall evolution of what has become a Louisiana institution.